Do These 4 Habits to Make Your Dreams Happen
There are a lot of things you can do to make your dreams happen, right? But having a laundry list of things to do can be overwhelming AF. I'm a big fan of starting small and building a strong foundation.
Today, I'm sharing 4 habits for you to focus on if you want to make your dreams happen. These 4 habits are totally doable and will help you make some serious progress on your dreams.
Before I just start spewing habits at you, it’s important that we get on the same page about what a habit actually is, yeah?
A habit is something that you do consistently. BOOM that’s it. It’s something that you put into practice in your life on the regular. Your habits, whether good or bad, make up your day to day life - which I know is not new information to you but I think it’s important to be reminded of that.
So these 4 habits are all things that you’ve probably heard me talking about before - in #hustlesanelynuggets posts (which speaking of, in case you missed it, we have moved the #hustlesanelynuggets posts to the @hustlesanely Instagram and they are now posted on Wednesdays), on the podcast, in a workshop or course - but I gathered 4 that I really think make the difference when it comes to making your dreams happen.
01 ⋒ Have regular check-in meetings.
It’s no secret that your girl is an advocate of regular check-ins and reflections. I have monthly reflect and prep meetings myself and I even have them built into the planners because they are that crucial to you making your dreams happen. How do these meetings help you make your dreams happen?
Because they usher you into reflection. And when we take intentional time to reflect, we can pinpoint what is working and what isn’t and make shifts when necessary.
Example - when my husband bought my wedding ring, he also purchased a warranty so that if I ever lost the diamond, we could get it replaced. Well there was a stipulation that came with the warranty - to keep the warranty valid, I have to take my ring to have it cleaned and checked every 6 months. They clean the stone and make sure the prongs holding it in place are tight.
When I go in for this, I never feel like my ring is super dirty or like the stone is super loose but I know that to keep the warranty valid, I have to go. I’m always AMAZED when I get my ring back at just how freaking shiny it is! I didn’t realize how dirty it had gotten over the last 6 months because I look at it every day. It’s only when I pause, take the ring to get cleaned, then see it after it’s been cleaned that I’m like OMG WOW it was so dirty!
This is how I think of the check-in meetings for our goals - we think we are doing okay because we are so used to how we’ve been working toward them day to day. But it’s only when we intentionally stop and reflect that we are able to see the bigger picture and pick up on habits that aren’t really serving us, our goals, or people in our lives.
And just for fun, here is a list of the predetermined check-in meetings that I have every year:
⋒ Yearly Vision Meeting - I see this as my bird’s eye view meeting. My husband and I do this together and we assess how the previous year went and plan our goals for the coming year. We do our family vision meeting in December.
⋒ Quarterly Check-In Meetings - This is a touchpoint meeting that I have every 3 months (January, April, July, October) to check in on how the progress is looking on my goals overall. I make sure my goals still make sense for the season of life I’m in, that I’m taking care of my mental health and nurturing important relationships in my life while pursuing the goal, and that how I’m pursuing the goal is working.
⋒ Monthly Check-In Meetings - I spend some time the first day of every month reflecting on how the previous month went - what worked, what didn’t, what progress I made, etc. and then create my game plan for the new month. I determine my focus goal (which is what it sounds like - the goal I’m focusing most of my time and attention on) and look at what is coming up that month.
⋒ Weekly Check-In Meetings - This is when I prep for the next week and I just do a quick look at what I got done and how I’m feeling based on what went down the previous week.
I can’t wait for the Hustle Sanely Journal to be done later this year because a lot of these meetings are built right in!
02. ⋒ Use goal stacking/habit stacking to make real change in your life.
So here’s what it is:
Instead of reaching your arms around 15 goals and pursuing them simultaneously or grabbing at 25 new habits that you try to start implementing at the same time, it’s focusing on one at a time, making it part of your life in a consistent and sustainable way, and then stacking the next goal or habit on top of that. It can be applied to both habits and goals (because really they are intertwined - our habits help us achieve our goals).
This is how we create real change in our lives. This is how we get off of the “Oh ,I’ll start on Monday” train. We get to that point when we feel overwhelmed which leads to becoming paralyzed which leads to throwing in the towel and reverting back to our old habits that were not supporting our goals.
Example here - let’s say a goal of yours this year is going to the gym 3 times per week. You decide that you want that to be your focus goal for January so in January, you start cultivating habits that align with that. Maybe you hire a trainer or get an accountability partner or buy new workout shoes or lay out your workout clothes the night before - whatever habits that work for you to help you get your butt to the gym 3 times every week.
Okay great - you did it! January is over and we are heading into February - you went to the gym at least 3 times every week in January. You’ve made it a habit in your life - it’s part of your routine now which means you don’t have to dedicate as much mental energy to sticking to the goal of going to the gym 3 times per week.
So while you’re still implementing the goal in February (and beyond) it’s no longer your focus goal. Maybe your focus goal in February is making weekly date nights a priority in your marriage or working on your side business for 5 hours every week. You’re not quitting the gym goal to exclusively do the date night or side business goal - you are stacking the new goal on top of the first one which works because like I said, the first one is now a habit and doesn't require as much thought or energy from you. Make sense?
Goal and habit stacking is how I’ve been able to accomplish so much in such a short time for Hustle Sanely. I used the goal stacking method when creating the first paper planner last year because that project took pretty much the entire year so I had to strategically stack other goals on and around it to make sure I was making progress in other necessary areas of my life and business too.
03. ⋒ Toss your long AF to-do list and use the Hustle Sanely Focus 3 method.
I will never stop sharing my love for the Hustle Sanely Focus 3 method because it has helped me make real, actual, true progress toward my goals and I know that it works because I get DMs on Instagram ALL THE TIME from Hustle Sanely Squad babes telling me how using Focus 3 has changed the game for them.
In case you’ve never heard of Focus 3 before, it’s actually 1 part of a 5 part thing. That 5 part thing is called Hustle Sanely 5 and it’s a list of what we Hustle Sanely babes do every day to make sure we are peacefully pursuing our dreams.
Allllll the things you need to know about HS5 can be found here, but let’s chat a little bit more about Focus 3 right now.
I am not a fan of exhaustive to-do lists every day. I like to have a master weekly to-do list (and I also have a master life to-do list) and then I use that master weekly to-do list to help me choose 3 tasks to focus on each day. Giving my best time and energy to these 3 tasks every day, as long as the tasks chosen align with making progress on your goals, helps you really chip away at your goals.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m staring at this long AF to-do list every day, I automatically get overwhelmed and that causes me to not want to do anything because I don’t know where to start. I feel like to-do lists are such a mental thing because it doesn’t matter if the things that make up the long to-do list are easy/low energy things like “get gas” “brush teeth” “walk the dogs” - staring at a long list is just daunting.
When you do get the gumption to start tackling a long list, 9 times out of 10, you give half effort to everything just so you can feel good about checking a bunch of stuff off.
It’s way more productive to do fewer things well that to halfway do a bunch of stuff, you know?
And if you feel a little stuck when it comes to choosing your Focus 3 items every day, I have an episode scheduled in March that is going to help you with that!
04. ⋒ Find a planning system that works for you.
This one sounds easy, right? And it totally can be but you still have to actually do it, lol. I used to be the kind of person who would have sticky notes filled with ideas and intentions everywhere. I had notes in random places on my phone with habits and goals I was working toward. That stuff doesn’t do you much good if you can’t find what you're looking for when it comes time to sit down and map out a plan for your goals.
When I finally collected all of my random notes and post-its, and consolidated them into a planning system that worked for me, BOOM - that is when the magic happened and I was able to make real progress on my goals.
When we don’t have planning systems in place that work for us, we sit there and use our precious energy spinning our wheels trying to figure out what we need to do instead of actually doing what we need to do, you know?
Just because a certain type of planning system works for most people, don’t try to put yourself in a box and make it work for you if it doesn't. There are so many different options out there so spend the time finding what works for you.
For example, I always hear about people planning for the week ahead on Sundays so I just did it because that’s what everyone else was doing. Well a few weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to try planning for the following week at the end of my work day on Friday. And guess what? I LOVED IT!
I felt so good wrapping up my week, knowing what was coming the following week, and not having to spend time on Sunday doing it. Sundays are my Sabbath day - I practice resting - so to not have to worry about planning for my week, I’m able to fully rest. It works better for me and my life!
In the Hustle Sanely BFF membership, I’ll be sharing my go-to planning tools and how I use all of them together in May so if that’s something you're interested in, keep that in mind! Spoiler alert - I use a planner and journal from Hustle Sanely OBVIOUSLY but I do use a few other tools, mostly for work, that I plan on sharing.
Whatever kind of system works for you - digital, pen and paper, sticky note - it doesn’t matter. Just figure it out, implement it, and stick to it!
And there you have it - 4 habits that you need to be doing to make some serious progress on your dreams.
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 065 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to listen into this topic!
